The First Few Days

May 15, 2010

The trip to London on Saturday was a long and tiresome journey but went smoothly and there were no hiccups. We left the school on a bus at 5:00pm and boarded a plane at 9:45pm for our 7½ hour flight to London, Heathrow airport. We landed in London on Sunday at 11:30am London time (5:30am Chicago time) and our baggage claim and customs went smoothly. We later found out that our plane was one of the last to land at Heathrow because of the ash cloud and the airport closed just two hours after we arrived.

The concert that night in Sevenoaks went well and the church we were in was almost 1,100 years old. John Donne pastored there for some time and some of Charles Dickens’ and Jane Austen’s relatives were buried in the churchyard. There was a large, 365-room house close to the church that is associated with Virginia Wolf. Needless to say, there is a lot of history in England and we see it everywhere we go.

We stayed with a wonderful couple and enjoyed talking about British culture over tea and "biscuits" as they call cookies. There are so many kinds of tea cookies it is unbelievable, and Lady Grey tea is even better than her husband Earl Grey. The congregation of the church at Sevenoaks was so hospitable and kind. It was obvious that they have a heart for preaching the gospel to their community.

May 18, 2010

Today was a great day filled with more laughs, more history and another concert. We drove to Portsmouth and spent some time at a local shopping center next to the naval base. We arrived at our next concert venue to find that it was located on the naval base where not only current ships of Her Majesties Royal Navy were docked, but where the HMS Victory was as well. This was the ship that Admiral Lord Nelson was captaining when he defeated Napoleon in the battle of Trafalgar and started the end of the war.

The concert went well; the chapel was small and beautiful with intricate woodwork and a large metal sculpted lectern with an eagle standing on a globe with dogs at the base for feet. I overheard someone explaining that the eagle is a symbol of the Church of England. The little chapel filled up with people from the area and afterward we gathered around more tea and cookies to socialize.

After the concert we were all paired up with our hosts whom we would be spending the night with. Tiffany and I, three other married couples and two single ladies were to stay at the home of the chaplain of the entire naval fleet. The chaplain was not here so we had no chance to meet him but the home was beautiful.

There was, however, a group more privileged than we were. A group of no less than ten students stayed at the commodore’s house. For those who may not know, captains command individual ships, commanders are higher than captains, vice admirals are under admirals who are in charge of ports (there are 6 or 7 admirals) and the commodore is the highest officer in the Royal Navy. He is in charge of the entire royal fleet and answers only to the Queen herself. They met the commodore and his wife and got some pictures with them and had a lot of fun.

May 19,2010

Today we left Portsmouth and drove to Barry, Wales. Here we performed our third concert at All Saints Parish. Even the Mayor of the town attended! A couple of churches from the community teamed up to feed our hungry group. The church filled up for the concert and afterward I (Tiff) was finally able to mingle with audience members. There was one woman who wanted the autograph of a young man in our group. I brought him over to introduce him to her, not sure of her reason for wanting his autograph, and then she told us that he looked just like her son who died thirty years ago. She had tears in her eyes as she told us, but she said it was so wonderful to watch him sing. It struck me again how incredible it is to meet people from all over the world with so many different stories.

After the concert we came home with our hosts who sat us down for snacks and tea. They told us about their hearts for evangelism and about a friend of theirs who was in the audience whom they are praying will soon accept Christ. The wife told us she meets a group of young people in Cardiff, the capital city, every Thursday for Open Air Evangelism. Pretty cool, huh?

Tomorrow we will be spending the day in Cardiff and we hope to have some fish and chips! Thank you for all of your prayers as we have been travelling and as our tour gets off to a strong start. Our next concert will be Saturday, so we are trying our best to rest up before then. Many of us still feel like we are on Chicago time, but we are coming along well anyway. Until next time!

Remember to check in from time to time and leave us some comments or questions, we will answer as best we can, as fast as we can. Thanks again and please keep praying for the choir and the people we minister to. Also, head over to the link to check out pictures of the trip.http://www.flickr.com/photos/drumtom21/


Thomas and Tiffany